The FDA Just Approved the First-Ever Drug to Treat Chronic Migraines

The drug, Aimovig, is a monthly injections that users can administer on their own

It won't prevent all migraine attacks, but it can make them less severe and reduce their frequency by 50 percent

On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the sale and use of the first drug ever to treat chronic migraines.

The drug is called Aimovig, and it’s made by Amgen
and Novartis. It’s a monthly injection that a user can administer by
themselves, as it works similarly to an insulin pen, the New York Times explained. It will cost users about $6,900 a year without insurance.

“The
drugs will have a huge impact,” Dr. Amaal Starling, a neurologist and
migraine specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, told the Times. “This
is really an amazing time for my patient population and for general
neurologists treating patients with migraine.”

Chronic
migraine, according to the International Headache Society, is defined
as “headache occurring on 15 or more days per month for more than three
months, which, on at least eight days per month, has the features of
migraine headache.” Chronic migraine, specifically, affects
approximately one percent of the population.

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Aimovig will not prevent all migraine attacks, but
it can make them much less severe and reduce their frequency by 50
percent, the Times explained — though that may be more than enough for
anyone suffering from these debilitating headaches.

According to the Mayo Clinic,
migraines can cause “severe throbbing pain or a pulsing sensation,
usually on just one side of the head. It's often accompanied by nausea,
vomiting, and extreme sensitivity to light and sound. Migraine attacks
can cause “significant pain for hours to days, and can be so severe that
the pain is disabling.”

Unlike current migraine
treatments, Aimovig also appears to come with little or no side
effects. According to Time, side effects reported by study participants
included colds and respiratory infections. In the clinical trials of
Aimovig, those participants actually taking the drug reported no more
side effects than those taking a placebo. However, the long term side
effects of the medication have yet to be determined.

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If medication isn’t your thing, a growing body of scientific work is proving that regular exercise can also prevent migraines
from ever happening in the first place. In 2015, a Swedish study showed
that migraine patients had fewer headaches after performing a 40-minute
cycling workout three times a week for three months. At the time, the
study noted that the physical routine worked just as well as topamirate –
one of the leading migraine-preventing drugs — but without the nasty
side effects of depression, tremors, and cognitive impairment.

Aimovig is still expected to be a big hit. As Robin Overlock, a clinical trial participant, noted to the Times, she went from having 27 migraine days a month to just two.